


Just Ask

by iwtv



Series: Silverflint from tumblr [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7891036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: The night after the first fight against Rogers, Silver asks James about Thomas. <br/>A sweet short and  some practice with writing non-epic-sized stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Ask

——————-

“Were you wanting to stay?” he asked, turning his ivory cup around in a slow circle on the table.

Silver glanced up at him from cleaning his leg and shrugged.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t decided yet.”

They sat in one of the open-walled, thatched-roof huts on the Queen’s island the night after the battle. All around the Queen’s people celebrated among the pirates, filling the night air with a strange mixture of boisterous English merriment and the steady beat of drums.

James didn’t reply to Silver’s answer, feeling rather unsatisfied with it. He had already begun to make plans for their return to Nassau and the next battle, but he knew John was growing attached to this place…and to someone in particular.

“Would Madi have anything to do with your decision?” he asked as casually as possible.

Silver paused and looked up at him, then stopped attending to his leg altogether, laying the cloth down beside a pitcher of water. He turned so that he faced James.

“Well,” he said at length. “She is quite the woman.”

“She is indeed,” he replied, half into the raised cup at his lips.

A short bout of silence settled over them before Silver surprised him.

“What would Thomas think of all this?”

James didn’t quite freeze up but he grew stiffer in his chair. It was an automatic reaction to hearing Thomas’s name, but he forced himself to relax, reminding himself that he’d given John an unspoken permission to speak that name and that it was all right.

James took a look around the hut and at how the modern was blended in with the primitive in every corner and yet it all maintained an orderly and cohesive appearance. The addition of silverware and rolled up parchment and books made it all feel intelligent in an English sort of way, but then his eyes would fall the tribal mask propped up on a table and he was reminded that much of this place was still unknown. Just as New Providence had been to him and Thomas once.

He turned back to Silver.

“I think he would have liked it. He was always intrigued by other cultures and foreign lands. He would have been among the first to try and talk with the natives.”

“How would he have appeared to them?”

James shrugged.

“The same as any white Englishman appears to them, I suppose.”

“Well we’re white and English,” said Silver, “But I doubt it’s the same thing,” he added wryly.

“No, I suppose not,” said James. “Thomas was tall; Billy’s height, probably. He had short blonde hair and blue eyes, like yours. Blue was his favorite color. Aside from that he dressed like a typical nobleman.”

“So he was born into money, then?”

James finally looked up at Silver suspiciously.

“Why are you so curious all the sudden?”

Silver’s eyes fell to the table between them. He picked up the wet cloth and bent down to his leg again.

“I just figured I’d try to get to know you better through him in some way,” he said. “It was nothing. Sorry.”

James heard something sensitive and expose in his voice. He stood and came around to Silver, close enough so that Silver stopped wiping his leg again and sat back to look at him.

James bent down into a crouch and reached out, fingertips touching his bare stump.

“It looks much better. Nearly healed over.”

He looked up through his brow and met Silver’s gaze.

“If you want to know, just ask,” he said in a velvet tone that made John want to glide through it with his whole being.

James rose.

“I’m off to bed. I’ll see you in the morning, John.”

He walked behind Silver towards the hut’s entrance and when he did his hand slipped up to Silver’s shoulder. His fingers brushed over the skin of his collarbone and neck, lingering for a moment before falling away. The intimacy of it sent a shock through him and he inhaled sharply. He wanted to reach out after James and…what?

He wasn’t certain. He was even less certain he wanted to contemplate the answers so instead he muttered out a ‘good night’ as James disappeared into the night.

He remained there for some time, finally raising his hand to touch the area James had touched. 

If you want to know, just ask.

Both his words and his touch had been deliberate, and Silver’s own words came back to him: I can’t tell if this was a warning, or a welcome.

Tonight however, he was certain of James’s actions: It was a welcome.

John left the hut and made his way to his own bed, feeling warm all over.


End file.
